Beauty

Yesterday I took the day off from blogging and just about everything else to spend time with my family. We visited the Mission at San Juan Capistrano here in California. All in all it was a wonderful day and I left the mission overwhelmed by it's sometimes simple and sometimes over the top beauty. I was sad not to stay a little longer but my mother in-law and I vowed to return on a week day with our Kindles in hand to just hang out and enjoy the gardens.

I spent a lot of time yesterday really thinking about beauty. What beauty actually is. The closest thing that I can come up with that makes any sense to me is that beauty is energy. Very similar to emotion in the way that it makes us react. At this point I will say that I am glad that there are all sorts of perspectives on beauty in the world. It seems that having others around and introducing  us to their concept of beauty helps us grow in some quite, but powerful way. Then passing that along to others helps them on their journey. And thank god, no one left me in charge to manage aesthetics.  We would live in a world of Spanish, Italian, and Gothic homes, filled with portraits and religious artifacts and a few Pre Raphaelite painting thrown in for good measure. (On the positive side, no one would be wearing their pants down below their butts. Enough already trends used to be in and out. Isn't it time for some change?)

Growing up, I was taunted by the size of my nose. Are you sure your not a Jew, I was asked by the kinder kids. The others referred to me as Barry Manilow's butt baby, or the spawn of Carl Malden. Even my sisters got in on the act in a good natured pick on little brother sort of way. In my early twenties I decided that if I had a different nose, I would have a different life. I found a plastic surgeon and had a nose job. Upon removing the bandages and revealing the new me in the mirror I couldn't see any difference. I had to look at a before photograph to realize how much work he had done. I wouldn't realize for several years, but I didn't see any difference because I looked in the mirror at "me". Lesson: I am not my body. I am reminded of this today because as I look in the mirror I see where my surgeon left his mark but I still see me. Not someone who is wounded, scared or some former shell of themselves. I see me. I am vital and full of life. I see the spark in my eye. I look down at my wrist (for my readers, the one I referred to as lasagna-wrist after the surgery). I see my wrist with it's new scar, but don't feel scared or imperfect. It is part of what my body is now and once again, I am not my body. An interesting twist to this is tattoos. Maybe because they are art and speak to us at a different level they seem to be somehow attached to us. This could be one reason that certain faiths condemn them. It is most likely another reason that there are so many people afraid of them or who look down on the people who have them.

Weight gain figures into this as well. I have heard so many people say don't they look at themselves in the mirror? Didn't they realize that they were gaining weight? Having been fat I can speak to this. I could see changes in the mirror, but it took a photograph to slap me into the reality of what I had become. So no we don't see. I believe, once again that we are looking at ourselves. Our true selves and we are not our body. Using a photograph there is the total disconnect. I think that is why it is said that the camera doesn't lie. I am glad that I had learned these this lesson because it was an easy jump to realize that I am not my body and therefore I am not my disease. I can manage the disease in my body. I can cure the disease in my body all while being me. Some people will choose not to manage it, not to cure it. In fact they will decide that they are tired of this life and decided to die. While that decision might be hard to understand it is just as valid and deserves respect the same as choosing life. Both ways are beautiful, because in the end we are not our body. If we choose to let go of it and allow it to die, we are still ourselves. I don't and won't even try to pretend to know what happens beyond that point, but in my heart I do believe that we go on. Some people believe in heaven. Some in hell, some in both. Others believe that we meld into the "all". I just know that we go on and that's quite enough for me.

There is beauty in all forms of life. We as humans have tried since the beginning of time to make sense out of it. Managing our environments, sometimes with amazing effect (The historic sections of New Orleans) and sometimes with disastrous results (post 1950's Orange County). Oh and if you disagree with me, cool! It's always good to have another point of view to shake me from my limited thinking. We manage nature (we call it gardening or parks). But in doing so me often miss some of the most beautiful things on the earth. The wonderful smell of wet dirt that did not get planted. The beauty of moss growing on a rock, not placed there by human hands, but my nature herself, showing us that life, all life, will go on. Just outside of our windows we see life and death all around us. The changing of the season. Plants baring their fruit and then withering away to make space for something else to live. The energy in it all is beautiful and yet unseen. Only felt.